Ira Byock writes, “Centuries from now, one of the things our era will be known for is the plague of dying badly. A growing number of physicians believe that one solution is helping their dying patients choose to end their lives. I disagree.”

Ira Byock writes, “Centuries from now, one of the things our era will be known for is the plague of dying badly. A growing number of physicians believe that one solution is helping their dying patients choose to end their lives. I disagree.”

I’m proud of being a physician and a lifelong political progressive. I ardently believe in human rights. But there are some things doctors must not do. Intentionally ending patients’ lives is chief among them.

Prolonged suffering before death emerged as a public health crisis in the mid-20th century. This first-world scourge, so persistent that few dare to imagine it can be eradicated, is a direct result of modern medicine’s original sin: believing that we can vanquish death. Given doctors’ success at saving lives threatened by severe injuries and infections, they presumed they could overmaster death. Yet despite the prowess of 21st-century medicine, my colleagues and I have yet to make a single person immortal. Instead, we have condemned countless incurably ill patients to needless anguish.

The recent news that stents inserted in patients with heart disease to keep arteries open work no better than a placebo ought to be shocking. Each year, hundreds of thousands of American patients receive stents for the relief of chest pain, and the cost of the procedure ranges from $11,000 to $41,000 in US hospitals.

But in fact, American doctors routinely prescribe medical treatments that are not based on sound science.

Chris Gard and Connie Yates want permission to take the 11-month-old home for his final days. But Great Ormond Street Hospital (GOSH) said it was not practical to provide the level of life-support treatment to Charlie at the couple’s London home. It says a hospice would be a more appropriate place for him

Chris Gard and Connie Yates want permission to take the 11-month-old home for his final days. But Great Ormond Street Hospital (GOSH) said it was not practical to provide the level of life-support treatment to Charlie at the couple’s London home. It says a hospice would be a more appropriate place for him

Residents of the Florida Keys are split over whether they agree that genetically modified mosquitoes have a place in fighting the spread of vector-born diseases.

The people of Key Haven, which is where a proposed mosquito trial would take place, voted against it. But residents of broader Monroe Country voted in favor of the modified mosquitoes testing. Ultimately, the decision to move forward will be up to the Florida Keys Mosquito Control Board. Given the split vote, the future of the project remains uncertain.

Oxitec, the company that developed the mosquitoes, has engineered male mosquitoes to pass a fatal gene on to their offspring, which kills them before they reach adulthood. When released into the environment, Oxitec’s mosquitoes can, in ideal circumstances, suppress the proliferation of mosquitoes and ultimately cut down on the mosquito-borne diseases.

Susan Gubar: I realized that I could do without the television and the landline, but the loss of the web was harrowing. I worried: How could I, as a cancer patient, manage to exist without internet access?

Susan Gubar: I realized that I could do without the television and the landline, but the loss of the web was harrowing. I worried: How could I, as a cancer patient, manage to exist without internet access?

All of my scheduling with the research nurse in charge of the clinical trial in which I participate occurs electronically. She sends me the dates and times of appointments as well as reminders about where to go for tests; then she emails me results. Once when I was terribly ill, I texted her in alarm and she phoned my local pharmacy with a prescription that did the trick. Now my email wasn’t even working on my cellphone. We were disconnected.

Throughout seven years of cancer treatment, I had emailed my oncologist with questions. Of course I limited myself to crucial problems, but knowing that I could rely on her expertise gave me a wonderful sense of security.

To email or not to email: I suspect this must be a question in medical circles these days. If electronic messaging with patients were to become more common, how could already busy physicians find the time to read and respond? Might they have to hire staff members to deal with inquiries and wouldn’t that effectively invalidate the personal reply patients seek? And how would they pay for it?

Kimberly Cervantes has spent much of her young life in Compton. She’s street smart and savvy; her maturity was born out of a violent childhood. Cervantes and other students are suing the School District, arguing that the trauma they faced makes it difficult to learn and demanding that the district offer them additional support, in much the same way schools must accommodate students with other disabilities

Kimberly Cervantes has spent much of her young life in Compton. She’s street smart and savvy; her maturity was born out of a violent childhood. Cervantes and other students are suing the School District, arguing that the trauma they faced makes it difficult to learn and demanding that the district offer them additional support, in much the same way schools must accommodate students with other disabilities

In high school, she was assaulted on a public bus. In middle school, she witnessed the deaths of two students. Her mother and younger brother were once robbed at gunpoint at a convenience store. The steady exposure to violence has led Cervantes to some dark places — including crippling anxiety and thoughts of suicide.

“There’s so many people out there acting out,” she said. “Drug abusers on almost every corner. It’s hard to maintain the whole happy-go lifestyle.”

In an unprecedented move, Cervantes and four other students are suing the Compton Unified School District, arguing that the trauma they have faced makes it difficult to learn and demanding that the district offer them additional support, in much the same way schools must accommodate students with autism, dyslexia and other disabilities.

Image: By Bahn Mi at English Wikipedia – Photograph taken by Bahn Mi of the Schoolwatch Programme and released freely under the Creative Commons Attribution ShareAlike 2.0 license.Transferred from en.wikipedia to Commons by Sreejithk2000 using CommonsHelper., CC BY-SA 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=10526146

On my morning drives to the hospital, the tears fell like rain. The prospect of the next 14 hours – 8am to 10pm with not a second’s respite from the nurses’ bleeps, or the overwhelming needs of too many sick patients – was almost too much to bear. But on the late-night trips back home, I’d feel nothing at all. Deadbeat, punch-drunk, it was utter indifference that nearly killed me. Every night, on an empty dual carriageway, I had to fight with myself to keep my hands on the steering wheel. The temptation to let go – of the wheel, the patients, my miserable life – was almost irresistible. Then I’d never have to haul myself through another unfeasible day at the hospital.

By the time I neared the end of my first year as a doctor, I’d chosen the spot where I intended to kill myself. I’d bought everything I needed to do it. All my youthful enthusiasm for healing, big dreams of saving lives and of making a difference, had soured and I felt an astronomic emptiness. Made monumentally selfish by depression, I’d ceased even to care what my husband would think of me, or that my little boy would grow up without his mother.